Home for the Holidays

Hello all! After 40 hours of travel, including an unexpected extra four hours in Washington Dulles airport, I arrived home on Saturday night, to windchills around -20 degrees Centigrade. Not quite the "Warm" welcome home I was expecting! However, the opportunity to reunite with my extended family on Sunday afternoon over an early Christmas dinner was a welcome treat, and Laura had a chance to meet some of my relatives for the first time.

This week we are wrapping up the proofing and editing of a funding request to USAID, which, when couple with the request to the Canadian CIDA, will enable Food for the Hungry and World Relief to help 36,000 war victims in Congo return to their homes and restart their lives. Please pray that this funding is approved, and we can get the projects, which include supporting farmers, small business, and women and children, started as soon as possible. The big concern is that planting season is early in the new year, and without needed tools and seeds to plant, many Congolese families will face famine through the next year. The immediate response to these needs can have long term effects for the whole region.

I am also shifting gears and preparing for the return to classes (in the nar future, perhaps?) if the strike is resolved. This trip has given me a lot of "food for thought", so I hope to channel these ideas into research papers. The cold winter weather, with 15 cm. of fresh snow last night, is sufficient encouragement to stay inside and do school work! I have posted new photos to my Picasa site, so please feel free to peruse!

Round Two in the DRC

Well, politically, things are moving in the wrong direction here. In the latest news, the UN Special Envoy (former Nigerian President Obasanjo)has given Nkunda more notoriety and confidence, the North Kivu governor has conceeded to talk to Nkunda, who says he demands only to talk to the President, and fighting has resumed in Masisi territory, as Nkunda expands his little empire. Another "Rumble in the Jungle", and Nhunda is Ali. Confident, arrogant, smaller and more hungry that his rival.

Meanwhile, with a ringside seats, I'd rather just wait until the KO or the tenth round, so we can start mopping up the floor. Right now, I'm on my second 24 hour turnaround for a grant proposal, hopefully concluding in a plane ticket home.

Rwanda, land of a thousand hills and millions of broken hearts

I went to the Kigali City Genocide Memorial today. Definitely sobering. Most sobering to me was that I just came from North Kivu, where the same feelings of mistrust, selfishness and hatred for those who are different is continuing on, as more women are raped, children become killers, and families are driven apart.

And it's never over. Two weeks ago in Goma, Rwandans told me that, if French troops were stationed in Congo (as part of a UN peacekeeping force), then they would cross into Congo and declare war, in retaliation for French assistance to the "genocidiares".

Did the American government support the return of Paul Kagame and the Tutsi minority to power in Rwanda? Do they support (through Rwanda) the rebel leader Nkunda, as many Congolese suggest? Is the media promoting Nkunda and his Tutsi rebel group out of shame for their poor coverage of the genocide?

The answers to these questions are not, and may never be clear. What is clear, is that any group, be it military, political, ethnic or religious, that forces citizens to "take sides" is not seeking peace. Identifying people as "them" or "us" is never unifying.

In the memorial, many of the memories from survivors are not of the "liberating forces" that stopped the genocide, and eventually formed a 'new Rwanda', but of heroes...people who could have joined the majority, should have participated, but instead gave up their homes, their food, and often their lives, to protect the innocent. Their neighbours, their "enemies", but their strongest allies.

Peace is not made by drawing lines in the sand, but by crossing overn those lines, and saying no to violence and ignorant intolerance.